Trials of farm system show profit boost - developer

A web-based programme is showing signs of helping sheep, beef and deer farmers to improve their incomes, the vet who developed it has told a conference.

Photo: RNZ / Alexander Robertson

StockCARE is a web-based system where farmers record animal production, soil fertility and financial performance information, to focus on where they can make improvements to increase their incomes.

The Te Awamutu vet who designed it, Chris Mulvaney, told a Queenstown conference initial trials showed farmers who used the programme increased the value of each sheep by $12.

"The other significant part of it was we compared the overall financial performance of those farms with the farms involved in the Meat and Wool Economics Survey in the same regions, and the cash surplus increase was about twice as much in our pilot farms compared to what we regard as the national average."